Investigation on Failure Loads and Failure Modes for Two Parallel Pin-Loaded Holes Made from Unidirectional Glass-Epoxy Nanoclay Laminates

Abstract

Purpose of this study is to obtain failure modes and failure loads of two Parallel pin loaded holes in unidirectional glass fibre/epoxy by adding nanoclay in the absence of nanoclay composite laminates using finite element analysis; the results are validated through experiment. The geometrical parameters studies in this survey include the distance between the diameter of the hole (e/d) and the free edge of specimen, the distance between two holes-to-hole diameter (M/d). The samples were exposed to constant speed tensile loading. The results showed that by adding nanoclay, failure load increases and failure modes varies from shear out to bearing failure. Furthermore, increasing distance from the free edge of the pin centre's increases load bearing capacity of two type of composite materials and changes the failure mode from shear to the bear, it increases and decreases the distance from canter's of pin in layers with and without nanoclay particles, respectively and changes failure mode from shear to bear mode. In order to find morphology of specimens and dispersion quality, Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) was used. For predicting failure load and differentiating failure modes, Tsai-hill failure criteria associated with material property degradation is used. Experimental and FEM results indicate importance of considering the impact of e/d and M/d ratios in the design of two Parallel pin joints. ANSYS was used to carry out numerical simulation and the results denote a good agreement between numerical and experimental results. In this study, by designing an experimental and numerical procedure to estimate the effect of nanoclay, on failure mode and failure load of typical composite material, glass-epoxy, we could illustrate that adding nanoclay brought with it improvement of shear and tensional strength of glass-epoxy about 10 %.